Friday, August 15, 2014

Get to Know Mary {a BookLook Blogger review}

This is the third title in the Get to Know series that I have reviewed. I started with Get to Know Apostle Paul, and I was so impressed I immediately put in for Get to Know King David. That was every bit as wonderful as the first one, so I had to go for a third one.

Get to Know Mary, by Nancy I Sanders, is my newest review item. Like the others in this series, the book contains a dozen chapters, mostly in the range of 8 pages each. I love that they are easily read in one sitting, without stressing out young readers.

Like the other books in the series, this contains wonderful photos of things like mangers, figs and present-day views of some ancient places. It contains fabulous maps of things like The Roman Empire. There is great art included as well.

In the reviews I linked above, I went into a fair amount of detail about how these books are set up, with vocabulary and extra explanations about the culture. I'm not going to repeat that info here.

With this book, I started reading it aloud to myself. Yeah, that felt a bit silly, but I was trying to get a better feel for the complexity of the sentences, and my kids just haven't been game to read any of these aloud to me. "It's faster to read it myself, Mom!" is what I get from them. (I did, by the way, make them both read a paragraph or two to me. Then I let them go.)

What I found was that there definitely are some big words, but at least for my kids, the context makes it fairly straight-forward. Maybe if they were less familiar with the overall story, they would struggle a bit more. Mostly it is the names that trip them up.

These biographies are amazing. That's my bottom line.

I definitely recommend them.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggersbook
review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive
review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this
in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”